London Pride, Or, When the World Was Younger

by M. E. Braddon

  CHAPTER XVIII.

  REVELATIONS.

  Lord Fareham stayed in his own house by the Thames, and nobody interferedwith his liberty, though Henri de Malfort lay for nearly a fortnightbetween life and death, and it was only in the beginning of December thathe was pronounced out of danger, and was able to be removed from LadyCastlemaine's luxurious rooms to his own lodgings. Scandal-mongers mighthave made much talk of his lying ill in her ladyship's house, and beingtenderly nursed by her, had not Lady Castlemaine outlived the possibilityof slander. It would have been as difficult for her name to acquire anyblacker stain as for a damaged reputation to wash itself white. The secretof the encounter had been faithfully kept by principals and seconds, DeMalfort behaving with a chivalrous generosity. He appeared, indeed, asanxious for his antagonist's safety as for his own recovery.

  "It was a mistake," he said, when Masaroon pressed him with home questions."Every man is mad once in his life. Fareham's madness took an angry turnagainst an old friend. Why, we slept under the same blanket in the trenchesbefore Dunkirk; we rode shoulder to shoulder through the rain of bullets atChitillon; and to pick a trumpery quarrel with a brother-in-arms!"

  "I wonder the quarrel was not picked earlier," Masaroon answered bluntly."Your courtship of the gentleman's wife has been notorious for the lastfive years."

  "Call it not courtship, Ralph. Lady Fareham and I are old playfellows. Wewere reared in the _pays du tendre_, Loveland--the kingdom of innocentattachments and pure penchants, that country of which Mademoiselle Scuderyhas given us laws and a map. Your vulgar London lover cannot understandplatonics--the affection which is satisfied with a smile or a madrigal.Fareham knows his wife and me better than to doubt us."

  "And yet he acted like a man who was madly jealous. His rudeness at thecard-table was obvious malice afore-thought. He came resolved to quarrel."

  "Ay, he came to quarrel--but not about his wife."

  Pressed to explain this dubious phrase, De Malfort affected a fit oflanguor, and would talk no more.

  The town was told that the Comte de Malfort was ill of a quartain fever,and much was said about his sufferings during the Fronde, his exposure todamp and cold in the sea-marshes by Dunkirk, his rough fare and hard ridingthrough the war of the Princes. This fever, which hung about him so long,was an after-consequence of hardship suffered in his youth--privationsfaced with a boyish recklessness, and which he had paid for with animpaired constitution. Fine ladies in gilded chairs, and vizard-masks inhackney coaches, called frequently at his lodgings in St. James's Streetto inquire about his progress. Lady Fareham's private messenger was at hisdoor every morning, and brought a note, or a book, or a piece of new musicfrom her ladyship, who had been sternly forbidden to visit her old friendin person.

  "You grow every day a gloomier tyrant!" Hyacinth protested, with morepassion in her voice and mien than ever her husband had known. "Why shouldI not go to him when he is ill--dangerously ill--dying perhaps? He is myold, old friend. I remember no joy in life that he did not share. Whyshould I not go to him in his sorrow?"

  "Because you are my wife, and I forbid you. I cannot understand thispassion. I thought you suffered the company of that empty-headed fop as yousuffered your lap-dogs--the trivial appendage of a fine lady's state. HadI supposed that there was anything serious in your liking--that you couldthink him worth anger or tears--should have ordered your life differently,and he would have had no place in it."

  "Tyrant! tyrant!"

  "You astound me, Hyacinth! Would you dispute the favours of a fop with youryoung sister?"

  "With my sister!" she cried, scornfully.

  "Ay, with your sister, whom he has courted assiduously; but with nohonourable motive! I have seen his designs."

  "Well, perhaps you are right. He may care for Angela--and think her toopoor to marry."

  "He is a traitor and a villain----"

  "Oh, what fury! Marry my sister to Sir Denzil, and then she will be safefrom all pursuit! He will bury her alive in Oxfordshire--withdraw her forever from this wicked town--like poor Lady Yarborough in Cornwall."

  "I will never ask her to marry a man she cannot love."

  "Why not? Are not you and I a happy couple? And how much love had we foreach other before we married? Why I scarce knew the colour of your eyes;and if I had met you in the street, I doubt if I should have recognisedyou! And now, after thirteen years of matrimony, we are at our firstquarrel, and that no lasting one. Come, Fareham, be pleasant and yielding.Let me go and see my old playfellow. I am heartbroken for lack of hiscompany, for fear of his death."

  She hung upon him coaxingly, the bright blue eyes looking up at him--eyesthat had so often been compared to Madame de Longueville's, eyes that hadsmiled and beamed in many a song and madrigal by the parlour poets of theHotel de Rambouillet. She was exquisitely pretty in her youthful colouringof lilies and roses, blue eyes, and pale gold hair, and retained at thirtyalmost all the charms and graces of eighteen.

  Fareham took her by both hands and held her away from him, severelyscrutinising a face which he had always been able to admire as calmly as ifit had been on canvas.

  "You look like an innocent woman," he said, "and I have always believed youa good woman; and have trusted my honour in your keeping--have seen thatman fawning at your feet, singing and sighing in your ear, and have thoughtno evil. But now that you have told me, as plainly as woman can speak toman, that this is the man you love, and have loved all your life, theremust needs come an end to the sighing and singing. You and Henri de Malfortmust meet no more. Nay, look not such angry scorn. I impute no guilt; butbetween innocence and guilt there need be but one passionate hour. The wifegoes out an honest woman, able to look her husband in the face as youare looking at me; the wanton comes home, and the rest of her life is ashameful lie. And the husband awakes some day from his dream of domesticpeace to discover that he has been long the laughing-stock of the town.I will be no such fatuous husband, Hyacinth. I will wait for no secondwarning."

  Lady Fareham submitted in silence, and with deep resentment. She had neverbefore experienced a husband's authority sternly exercised. She had beenforbidden the free run of London play-houses, and some of the pleasures ofCourt society; but then she had been denied with all kindness, and had beenallowed so many counterbalancing extravagances, pleasures, and follies,that it would have been difficult for her to think herself ill-used.

  She submitted angrily, passionately regretting the man whose presence hadlong been the brightest element in her life. Her cheek paled; she grewindifferent to the amusements which had been her sole occupation; shesulked in her rooms, equally avoiding her children and their aunt; and,indeed, seemed to care for no one's society except Mrs. Lewin's. The Courtmilliner had business with her ladyship every day, and was regaled withcakes and liqueurs in her ladyship's dressing-room.

  "You must be very busy about new gowns, Hyacinth," her husband said to herone day at dinner. "I meet the harridan from Covent Garden on the stairsevery morning."

  "She is not a harridan, whatever that elegant word may mean. And as forgowns, it would be wiser for me to order no new ones, since it is butlikely I shall soon have to wear mourning for an old friend."

  She looked at her husband, defying him. He rose from the table with a sigh,and walked out of the room. There was war between them, or at best an armedneutrality. He looked back, and saw that he had been blind to the things heshould have seen, dull and unobservant where he should have had sense andunderstanding.

  "I did not care enough for my honour," he thought. "Was it because I caredtoo little for my wife? It is indifference, and not love, that is blind."

  Angela saw the cloud that overshadowed Fareham House with deepest distress;and yet felt herself powerless to bring back sunshine. Her sister met herremonstrances with scorn.

  "Do you take the part of a tyrant against your own flesh and blood?" sheasked. "I have been too tame a slave. To keep me away from the Court whileI was young and worth looking at--to deny me amusemen
ts and admirationwhich are the privilege of every woman of quality--to forbid me theplay-house, and make a country cousin of me by keeping me ignorant ofmodern wit. I am ashamed of my compliance."

  "Nay, dearest, was it not an evidence of his love that he should desire youto keep your mind pure as well as your face fair?"

  "No, he has never loved me. It is only a churlish jealousy that would shutme up in a harem like a Turk's wife, and part me from the friend I likebest in the world--with the purest platonic affection."

  "Hyacinth, don't be angry with me for being out of the fashion; but indeedI cannot think it right for a wife to care for the company of any other manbut her husband."

  "And my husband is so entertaining! Sure any woman might be contentwith such gay company--such flashes of wit--such light raillery!" criedHyacinth, scornfully, walking up and down the room, plucking at thelace upon her sleeves with restless hands, her bosom heaving, her eyessteel-bright with anger. "Since his sickness last year, he has been theimage of melancholy; he has held himself aloof from me as if _I_ had hadthe pestilence. I was content that it should be so. I had my children andyou, and one who loved me better, in his light way, than any of you--and Icould do without Lord Fareham. But now he forbids me to see an old friendthat is dangerously ill, and every drop of blood in my veins boils inrebellion against his tyranny!"

  It was in the early dusk, an hour or so after dinner. Angela sat silent inthe shadow of a bay window, quite as heavy-hearted as her sister--sorry forHyacinth, but still sorrier for Hyacinth's husband, yet feeling that therewas treachery and unkindness in making him first in her thoughts. Butsurely, surely he deserved a better wife than this! Surely he deserved awife's love--this man who stood alone among the men she knew, hating allevil things, honouring all things good and noble! He had been unkind toher--cold and cruel--since that fatal night. He had let her understand thatall friendship between them was at an end for ever, and that she had becomedespicable in his sight; and she had submitted to be scorned by him, sinceit was impossible that she should clear herself. She had made her sisterlysacrifice for a sister who regarded it very lightly; to whose light fancythat night and all it involved counted but as a scene in a comedy; and shecould not unmake it. But having so sacrificed his good opinion whose esteemshe valued, she wanted to see some happy result, and to save this splendidhome from shipwreck.

  Suddenly, with a passionate impulse, she went to her sister, and put herarms round her and kissed her.

  "Hyacinth, you shall not continue in this folly," she cried, "to fret forthat shallow idler, whose love is lighter than thistledown, whose elementis the ruelle of one of those libertine French duchesses he is ever talkingabout. To rebel against the noblest gentleman in England! Oh, sister,you must know him better than I do; and yet I, who am nothing to him, amwretched when I see him ill-used. Indeed, Hyacinth, you are acting like awicked wife. You should never have wished to see De Malfort again, afterthe peril of that night. You should have known that he had no esteemfor you, that he was a traitor--that his design was the wickedest,cruellest----"

  "I don't pretend to know a man's mind as well as you--neither De Malfort'snor my husband's. You have needed but the experience of a year to make youwise enough in the world's ways to instruct your elders. I am not going tobe preached to----Hark!" she cried, running to the nearest window, andlooking out at the river, "that is better than your sermons."

  It was the sound of fiddles playing the symphony of a song she knewwell--one of De Malfort's, a French chanson, her latest favourite, thewords adapted from a little poem by Voiture, "Pour vos beaux yeux."

  She opened the casement, and Angela stood beside her looking down at a boatin which several muffled figures were seated, and which was moored to theterrace wall.

  There were three violins and a 'cello, and a quartette of singing-boys withfair young faces smiling in the light of the lamps that hung in front ofFareham's house.

  The evening was still, and mild as early autumn, and the plash of oarspassing up and down the river sounded like a part of the music--

  "Love in her sunny eyes doth basking play, Love walks the pleasant mazes of her hair, Love does on both her lips for ever stray, And sows and reaps a thousand kisses there; In all her outward parts love's always seen; But, oh, he never went within."

  It was a song of Cowley's, which De Malfort had lately set to music, and toa melody which Hyacinth especially admired.

  "A serenade! Only De Malfort could have thought of such a thing. Lying illand alone, he sends me the sweetest token of his regard--my favourite air,his own setting--the last song I ever heard him sing. And you wonder that Ivalue so pure, so disinterested a love!" protested Hyacinth to her sister,in the silence at the end of the song.

  "Sing again, sweet boys, sing again!" she cried, snatching a purse from herpocket, and flinging it with impetuous aim into the boat.

  It hit one of the fiddlers on the head, and there was a laugh, and in atrice the largesse was divided and pocketed.

  "They are from his Majesty's choir; I know their voices," said Hyacinth,"so fresh, and pure. They are the prettiest singers in the chapel. Thatlittle monkey with the cherub's voice is Purcell--Dr. Blow's favouritepupil--and a rare genius."

  They sang another song from De Malfort's repertoire, an Italian serenade,which Hyacinth had heard in the brilliant days before her marriage, whenthe Italian Opera was still a new thing in Paris. The melody brought backthe memory of her happy girlhood with a rush of sudden tears.

  The little concert lasted for something less than an hour, with intervalsof light music, dances and marches, between the singing. Boats passed andrepassed. Strange voices joined in a refrain now and then, and the sistersstood at the open window enthralled by the charm of the music and thescene. London lay in ruins yonder to the east, and Sir Matthew Hale andother judges were sitting at Clifford's Inn to decide questions of titleand boundary, and the obligation to rebuild; but here in this westernLondon there were long ranges of lighted windows shining through the wintrymists, wherries passing up and down with lanterns at their prows, an air oflife and gaiety hanging over that river which had carried so many a noblevictim to his doom yonder, where the four towers stood black against thestarlit greyness, unscathed by fire, and untouched by time.

  The last notes of a good-night song dwindled and died, to the accompanimentof dipping oars, as the boat moved slowly along the tideway, and lostitself among other boats--jovial cits going eastward, from an afternoon atthe King's theatre, modish gallants voyaging westward from play-house ortavern, some going home to domesticity, others intent upon pleasure andintrigue, as the darkness came down, and the hour for supper and deeperdrinking drew near. And who would have thought, watching the lightedwindows of palace and tavern, hearing those joyous sounds of glee or catchtrolled by voices that reeked of wine--who would have thought of thedead-cart, and the unnumbered dead lying in the pest pits yonder, or thecity in ruins, or the King enslaved to a foreign power, and pledged to ahated Church? London, gay, splendid, and prosperous, the queen-city of theworld as she seemed to those who loved her--could rise glorious from theashes of a fire unparalleled in modern history, and to Charles and Wren itmight be given to realise a boast which in Augustus had been little morethan an imperial phrase.